Tightrope Walker Read online

  “The ultimate punishment, too,” I added quietly, “for not being enough to her.” And suddenly the tears I’d not cried for so long overwhelmed me and I sobbed in Joe’s arms, and gulped and sobbed some more, and finally, reduced to hiccups, I sat up and looked at him, finding him blurred through my lingering tears, and I smiled at him. “Thanks,” I said. “I needed that.”

  He laughed. “You’re going to be all right, you know—that’s the thing to remember, Amelia. In my book you’re already okay. The absence of love is very prevalent in this world, and the word love is the most corrupted word in the dictionary. But patterns can be broken, you know.”

  “I sure hope so,” I said, and softly quoted Amman Singh. “A tree may be bent by harsh winds but is no less beautiful than the tree that grows in a sheltered nook, and often it bears the richer fruit.…”

  He stared at me gravely in the light of the torch beside us. “You’re a very lovely, special sort of person, Amelia, do you know that?”

  I looked at him, startled, and then—flippantly, gratefully—I leaned over and kissed him, except that when our lips met our arms somehow curved instantly, greedily, around each other and suddenly there was nothing of gratitude in the strange wild heat that rose in me. I gasped, “Joe—”

  He said questioningly, almost desperately, “Amelia—” and a moment later we were inside my sleeping bag, our clothes strewn across the floor and I was learning for the first time the new and exotic language of the body and there was nothing sacrificial about me at all.

  Thus was I deflowered, as the Victorians would say. Delightfully, lustily, willingly, and with much pleasure, in a black van with portholes in Carleton, Maine. No Aztec maiden, I.

  Later, smoothing my tangled hair, Joe said, “Let’s never be careless with each other, Amelia, promise? Because what happened just now between us is too important.”

  “Yes,” I said dreamily, “but when can it happen again, Joe?”

  He laughed. “Go to sleep, you wanton child.”

  I giggled and closed my eyes and lay there, feeling the warmth of his body next to mine—how amazing life could be, after all!—and knowing that when we woke up we’d make love again. It was almost enough to make me forget Hannah, the Hannah who went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn.

  And suddenly, just as I was slipping into a grateful sleep, I remembered the source of the quotation: it surfaced smoothly into consciousness, striking me full force, like a blast of lightning, so that I wondered how I could have missed it earlier. Except for the change in gender it was a word-for-word quotation from The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. They were the closing lines of the book: and so he went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn.

  7

  “She must have loved the book, too,” I told Joe incredulously the next morning at breakfast. We were seated at a diner in Anglesworth and it was ten o’clock. “I mean, it’s been out of print for years. It’s the most astonishing thing.”

  “I’ve never heard of The Maze in the Heart of the Castle,” Joe said, biting into his toast. “Are you certain the inscription on the gravestone is the same? It must be years since you’ve read it.”

  “But it isn’t,” I told him eagerly. “I mean, besides rereading it once a year I bought a first edition of it in New York only last week. I would have shown it to you if you—if we—well, anyway, I found it in a secondhand bookstore and although I only thumbed through it I reread that same last page before I put it away … and so he went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn.”

  “The book meant that much to you?”

  “It saved my life,” I told him earnestly. “I was so very young, you know, and so clobbered. It gave me a kind of philosophy.”

  “And what was it?” Joe asked, smiling faintly as he watched me.

  I considered this because, after all, what had it given me besides entertainment? “It gave me a certain feeling,” I said, choosing words cautiously, “and out of this feeling came the idea that maybe life isn’t meant to be easy, that it’s a kind of pilgrimage or testing ground, and we have to fight like warriors to live. I mean to live well.”

  “Like warriors,” Joe repeated, sounding interested.

  “But that isn’t right, either,” I said despairingly. “Oh I wish I’d brought the book with me so you could see for yourself. It’s a wonderful book, Joe, he meets the Despas and the Wos and the Conjurer and then the Talmars, and he escapes them to meet the Magistrate and then falls in love with a girl named Charmian, who betrays him, and finally he meets Serena—oh yes and Raoul, too, who’s Prince of Galt, and once he’s reached the Galts, you see, he’s gone through the maze, he’s free, and he and Serena …” I trailed off limply. “Well, I do wish you could know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m admiring you while you describe it,” Joe said, grinning. “How did you come by the book?”

  I remembered that clearly. “My aunt Stacey sent it to me for Christmas just after Mother died.”

  “So the book was published eleven or twelve years ago?”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t a new book when she sent it, which surprised me, because Aunt Stacey lived on the West Coast and usually sent new, glamorous, California-type presents. I thought at the time it might have been one of her books when she was young, except that the book was published in 1949 or 1950, I forget which. She must have bought it in a secondhand store because she’d heard something about it, or thought I’d like it.”

  “As you certainly did,” said Joe.

  I nodded and said solemnly, “I think I like this Hannah of ours very much, Joe.”

  Joe brought me down from my trip by saying, “It’s certainly convenient you like her, but we’re here to establish whether she was murdered or not, remember? And it’s Monday morning, and sometime today I’m going to have to call my answering service—”

  I was impressed. “You have an answering service, Joe?”

  “—and see whether there are any messages about being in court Wednesday. Yes I have an answering service.”

  “What happens Wednesday?” I asked. On Saturday morning Wednesday had seemed a century away; now it loomed closer, it had a shape to it, it was something that could remove Joe, and I was feeling less charitable.

  “It’s when Griselda’s case may or may not come to court,” he said. “Griselda’s eleven years old and was taken away from her grandmother because her grandmother’s seventy-three and can’t jump rope with her, for heaven’s sake. She was put in a foster home where she changed so much over a period of two years that they’ve decided she’s schizophrenic and ought to be institutionalized.”

  “Oboy,” I said.

  He nodded. “Her grandmother’s a smart cookie and hired a lawyer, who hired me. We’ve collected handwriting samples from years back, and think we can prove 1) that the foster parents are the crazies and 2) that Griselda has withdrawn because she has niether stability nor love in her life. She needs her grandmother.”

  “Will there be someone to believe you?” I asked cautiously.

  “One always hopes,” he said. “There’ll be some heavy batteries drawn up against us, because bureaucracies are certainly not happy about being wrong, which is why they’re playing games with us about the court hearing.” He drank the last of his coffee and put the cup down. “Are you finished yet? We’ve got a long list of things to do today, Amelia.”

  “Right,” I said, and swallowed the last of my toast. “Death certificate first, or obituaries?”

  “I think death certificate first,” Joe said. “After all, if it turns out that Hannah died in a hospital of pneumonia, or collapsed of a heart attack in full view of a crowd of people, then we might as well go sightseeing.”

  “Joe, you don’t really think—”

  “Verify, Amelia, verify,” he said with a grin. “Don’t forget I have a lawyer for a father, and some of his legal mind has rubbed off on me. Verify everything.”

  It was a shabby diner
, with an eroded mirror behind the counter. While Joe paid the bill and asked directions to the courthouse I studied its dreary decorations, which consisted mainly of signs pasted over the scars across the huge mirror: IN GOD WE TRUST BUT NOT IN CREDIT; A SMILE COSTS NOTHING, TRY IT, and the same ubiquitous political posters, which this time I read in depth: FOR U.S. SENATOR ELECT ANGUS TUTTLE, four years State Senator, a man of experience, a man of vision. This poster carried a photograph of him wearing tweeds and sitting in an armchair looking like a man in a toothpaste ad. He had prematurely white hair, handsome brows, a young face, and that broad, dazzling white smile.

  The other poster read VOTE FOR SILAS WHITNEY FOR U.S. SENATE, a man of the people, a new voice, a man of judgment. There was a picture of him, too; he looked as if his face had been carved out of granite, long and thin, with long thin lines running from nose to mouth, steady black eyes and a lantern jaw. Silas Whitney looked as if he really did have judgment and was a man of the people but I guessed he was already doomed. I didn’t think he had a chance against that enormous toothy smile.

  “What on earth are you doing?” asked Joe, seeing my lips moving silently.

  “Counting teeth,” I said, pointing to Tuttle’s political poster. “His smile shows twelve upper teeth, it’s unbelievable.”

  “So are you,” he said, reaching for my hand, and as we walked out into the sunshine Joe looked down and smiled at me. It was a lovely smile, made up of all that we’d shared together since we awoke at six that morning in each other’s arms, and I couldn’t help wondering if I’d ever be so happy again. I think I realized even then that it was real, but that it wasn’t real like work and morning and eating and sleeping, and that enchanted moments come seldom, like beads on a long string with spaces in between. But this made it all the more precious; I had never been cherished before, or truly and utterly happy.

  The courthouse stood on a side street, a very old building with Corinthian columns and a fine frieze set into the inverted V over the entrance. We had to ask, and then look for the City Clerk’s office, and then it was necessary to buy a copy of the death certificate in order to see it. “It’s how they make a little money,” Joe pointed out, amused at my indignation.

  But I wasn’t really indignant at buying it. I was trembling with suspense and angry at the wait. This was the moment of truth: if, as Joe had pointed out, Hannah had died of pneumonia or a heart attack, then how was I going to reconcile it with the note in the hurdy-gurdy? Was I about to discover that I had been a fool to take the note so seriously, after all I’d gone through to find Hannah?

  The copy of the death certificate was presented to us, I paid the two dollars and we leaned over it eagerly, my eyes skidding past the name MEERLOO and down to the cause of death: a, it read, intracranial hemorrhage; b, basalar skull fracture. It was signed by Timothy Cox, M.D.

  “Not pneumonia,” I said flatly. “Not heart attack.”

  Joe shook his head. “Skull fracture.”

  “Like maybe a blow on the head,” I said. “Joe, let’s get to the newspaper office and see if we can find an obituary.”

  He nodded, and it surprised me how startled he looked. I suppose until now his interest had been spasmodic and academic and the thought of foul play unreal; he had come along only for the ride, so to speak, and to humor me. Now his attention had been wrenched away from me—I didn’t begrudge it for a moment—and was fastened upon five words on a certificate that couldn’t be lightly explained away by anyone who had read Hannah’s note. The possibility of a murder was just becoming real to Joe for the first time, I could actually see it happening.

  The Anglesworth newspaper was on the main street, and its office so small that I was afraid they might not have files of back issues; but I was wrong: the office was small but its basement ran under all the other shops in the building.

  “You might as well come down with me if you’re doing some kind of research,” the woman clerk told us. “It’s a bit clammy down there but there’s a table for reading, and chairs; 1965, you said?”

  “July 25, 1965,” I reminded her.

  “Well, that’s easy enough, we’ve only microfilmed up to 1963. The newspaper,” she added in a pleased voice, “was founded in 1897.”

  The Anglesworth Tribune was a weekly paper, which was disappointing, but it explained why the plastic-bound volume for 1965 could be easily carried to the table and deposited there by one person. The clerk went upstairs, and Joe and I eagerly opened the looseleaf jacket and riffled through the pages to May.

  “Obituaries, obituaries,” I murmured, running my finger down the index on the first page of the July 28 issue.

  Joe said in a strange voice, “You don’t have to look for the obituaries, Amelia.”

  I followed his pointing finger to the headline on the first page of the Tribune: NOTED RESIDENT DIES IN BIZARRE ACCIDENT.

  “Bizarre accident,” I repeated aloud. “Joe, it says bizarre accident. They must have gotten away with it.”

  And then I saw the subheadline: “Hannah Gruble Meerloo, Philanthropist and Author, Dead at 40.”

  My eyes were caught—trapped—by the word author and the word Gruble. Only with an effort did I wrench them free to skim the page, my heart literally pounding, my breath suspended … and there it was, down near the end of the column: “in 1950 Mrs. Meerloo, using her maiden name of Gruble, published a book for young people entitled ‘The Maze in the Heart of the Castle,’ of which the New York Times wrote, ‘a small classic, a book for adults as well as children, full of enchantments and insights.’ It is the only book Mrs. Meerloo is known to have written.”

  I whispered, “Joe, she’s H. M. Gruble—my Gruble. She wrote the book.”

  “Take it easy for heaven’s sake,” Joe said. “You look as if you’re going to faint, Amelia. Are you all right?”

  I just stared at him, my head spinning. No, not my head but the thoughts inside of it … and so she went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn.… If search you must then I can only give you this advice, the important thing is to carry the sun with you, because there will be a great and terrifying darkness … But I must clear up one detail, my dear young lady, that is not a hurdy-gurdy but a mere hand organ … They’re going to kill me soon—in a few hours I think … Look, whoever this is, she has to be dead now, which makes you some kind of a nut, doesn’t it? and Amman Singh saying to me, Trust the wind. Someday you will understand.

  I said in a clear hard voice, “I am very much all right, Joe, I am very much all right.”

  And I sat down at the table, glanced politely at a rather blurred photograph of a woman that capped the story, and began to carefully read the column below it.

  July 25/ Mrs. Hannah Meerloo, long-time resident of Carleton and noted philanthropist, was pronounced dead on arrival at Anglesworth Hospital early yesterday morning, following a fall down the cellar stairs in her home on Tuttle Road. Mrs. Meerloo was the widow of Jason Meerloo, killed in World War II, and had lived in Carleton since 1953.

  In the house at the time of the accident were her niece, Leonora Harrington, who had arrived just that day for a visit; a house guest, Hubert Holton, and her summer chauffeur, John Tuttle, a graduate student of Union College. Of the accident Miss Harrington said, “I heard this terrible scream and when I turned on my bedside light it was five minutes after one in the morning. I raced into the hall and bumped into Mr. Holton, who’d heard it, too. We knocked on my aunt Hannah’s door and then went in and found her lights burning but the room empty. We began searching for her, not knowing where the scream came from, and then we heard a pounding on the kitchen door.

  “It was Aunt Hannah’s chauffeur, Jay, who sleeps over the garage adjoining the house. He’d heard the scream too. We finally found her lying at the foot of the cellar stairs. She must have been going down to the safe—there were canceled checks lying all around her. She was always up late nights, and the safe is in the basement, in the old preserve closet.”

  Miss Ha
rrington was admitted to hospital suffering from shock and gave this account this morning upon being discharged.

  Joe said in an astonished voice, “It’s real then, Amelia: a very odd and disputable death.”

  We were silent then, each of us immersed, I think, in this explosion of theory meeting fact. Hannah had written that she believed she was going to be murdered, and here was Hannah’s death described for us: a bizarre accident in the middle of the night, one of those inexplicable tragedies that do happen to people occasionally, except that more than a decade later we possessed Hannah’s note.

  Joe said, puzzled, “But how was it done, considering what we know from her letter? And by whom? She knew these people, Amelia.”

  “I think a successful murder has to be like a magic trick,” I said slowly. “Like sleight-of-hand, Joe, with something moving faster than the eye can follow.”

  He said, “Give me Hannah’s note to read again.”

  I dug it out of my purse and while he reread her letter I finished scanning the rest of the news column. It was Hannah’s obituary, but the pattern and shape of her life had begun to matter to me now as much as her death. It said:

  Mrs. Meerloo was born Hannah Maria Gruble in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1925, the daughter of a carpenter and a schoolteacher. At 18 she married Jason Meerloo, whose father was an inventor who made millions from his various patents and inventions, a fortune his son Jason inherited several months before his tragic death in France. Left widowed and wealthy at an early age Mrs. Meerloo traveled extensively for several years and is believed to be the first American woman to have visited Tibet. In 1950, using her maiden name of Gruble she published a book for young people entitled “The Maze in the Heart of the Castle,” of which the New York Times wrote, “a small classic, a book for adults as well as children, full of enchantment and insights.” It is the only book Mrs. Meerloo is known to have written.

  In 1953 she purchased the old Whitney house on Tuttle Road in Carleton and lived there in semi-seclusion with her housekeeper. She endowed and built the Greenacres Private Psychiatric Hospital near Portland, established in 1946 the Jason Meerloo Orphanage in Anglesworth, and gave to this city the building which now houses the public library.